'Natural Philosophy' as a Foundation for Science Education in an Age of High-Stakes Accountability

摘要

Science curriculum and instruction in K-12 settings in the United States is currently dominated by an emphasis on the science standards movement of the 1990s and the resulting standards-based high-stakes assessment and accountability movement of the 2000s. We argue that this focus has moved the field away from important philosophical understandings of science teaching and learning that have their roots in the history of both learning theory and scientific discovery. We offer a philosophical argument, as well as a model for implementation, grounded in the 19th century notion of "natural philosophy," as well as Dewean progressivism and Piaget's notion of reconstruction through rediscovery, for the important place of the history of science in modern science education. We provide curricular examples of this model, as well as a discussion of how it might be implemented as part of teacher education. We focus our discussion on the elementary and middle school grades, because teachers at these levels tend to have more limited science content knowledge than their secondary school peers, making them more dependent upon curricular materials and thus more heavily influenced by curricular reforms.